06/21/2010

DIS is a dissection of fashion, art and commerce which seeks to dissolve conventions, distort realities, disturb ideologies and disrupt the dismal dissemination of fashion discourse. All is open to discussion. There is no final word.

These photographs were all taken in the summer of 2008, in Red Wing, Minnesota, the town where my parents met in the early 1970’s. If I were a book, Red Wing, Minnesota would be my preface.
I went to Red Wing to explore the alternate reality of what my life could have been. I photographed old friends of my parents but also took pictures of strangers. I photographed farmers, townspeople, and young artists, storefronts, farmland, vacant lots, and interior spaces. For me, photographing Red Wing is like breathing life into a faded snapshot.

01/26/2009

Photographer David Bergman has created the coolest photograph of the Inauguration ever! Go to Gigapan.org now. You will not be disappointed. The photograph is made up of 220 images with a final image size of 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. That is one seriously big picture. The zoom function kicks butt. Puffy, Beyoncé, Denzel! Clarence Thomas sleeping! Yo-yo Ma snapping pics! Mysterious disappearing bodies and misaligned heads! Photo-nerdish as I am, I was most excited to spot a large-format wooden camera (lower right-hand corner) and standing next to it, Annie Leibovitz!

01/07/2009

This year, I am investing in the handmade, which is why I LOVE the website Etsy.com: “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade.” You can spend hours poring over offerings made by people all over the world! Handmade everything – candles, leg warmers, marmalade, jewelry, comics, puppets, stationery, knitting, soaps, “geekery” (huh?). You can also choose to buy locally (Brooklyn!).

I also want to write more real letters and cards this year. I have ribbon-wrapped packages of letters from my college years and earlier, but every since email, well… you know. I feel like I’ve forgotten my penmanship!

So, how pleased was I to find that there are many, many people on Etsy making handmade letterpress cards (my favorite!).

Most things on Etsy are reasonably priced and there’s something really exciting about supporting handmade endeavors. Once you start on Etsy though, you won’t be able to stop. And you’ll feel inspired to start making things yourself, like Cook’s Illustrated No-Knead Bread 2.0:

12/05/2008

Blogroll is finally updated with all the photo blogs I follow via google reader (whew).

Pretty impressive how many photographers out there are writing blogs. I tried to maintain consistency with the listings, i.e., if a blog has a specific title, it’s listed as such. If not, then I listed it as x-photographer’s blog. Which makes me wonder, do people prefer to be listed with their name or does it not matter. My blog is sometimes listed as “H.J.K.”, other times as “Hee Jin Kang’s blog” and I don’t mind either way.

Anyway, happy reading.

RELATED: If you haven’t read this Andrew Sullivan piece “Why I Blog” … here it is.

11/19/2008

You thought you were going to get A LOT of work done today, but guess not. LIFE magazine’s photo archive has gone live on google – http://images.google.com/hosted/life – and it’s over 10 million photographs, most of which are available to the public for the first time. Go ahead, whittle the day away poring over the pictures because you can always call it research.

And here’s a tip: Add “source:life” to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example, photographer source:life eventually leads you to:

A wonderful picture of photographer Margaret Bourke-White dangling from a helicopter while on assignment for LIFE in 1951. Though the photo is also credited to Bourke-White… hmm… now that’s a feat.